"I FELT like I'd been hit by a truck . . . I knew it was something big and I knew I had to get out of there or I'd be dead. End of story."

Those were the words of Mary Jane Ryan yesterday as she lay in a bed in Bundaberg Hospital reliving the terrifying shark attack which she believes could have claimed her life.
Sporting a massive bruise to her right hand and arm and a badly gouged leg, Ms Ryan, 59, gave a graphic account of the leisurely Monday afternoon swim at Moore Park beach, just north of Bundaberg, that ended in horror.

Escaping the sweltering 38C heat, Ms Ryan had been swimming alone in chest-deep calm water at low tide when the shark struck.

"All of a sudden, bam, and I knew it was a shark," she said. "And I knew it had bit my leg and people say 'did you look around?' and it was like 'no, I just knew I had to get out of there'.

"Well, I just ran towards the beach. I started to fall because I knew I was losing blood. I was scared to death that the thing was going to come back and take another bite out of me . . . or there was a pack of them.

"I was remembering that girl that got attacked off Stradbroke and I could see the blood coming down my leg and I ran up the beach to where my towel was and I wrapped the towel around my leg.

"There was no one on the beach, so I kept running back towards the kiosk where I knew Jay (the owner) was and I was screaming 'help, help' because there was a flap on my leg that was open and you could see all the fat and muscle . . . the doctors even found some of its teeth in my bone."

Kiosk owner Jay Walls and a passing woman rushed to Ms Ryan's aid and kept pressure on the wound with towels until ambulance officers arrived, by which time she said she was in excruciating pain.

After undergoing one round of surgery to clean the wound, Ms Ryan was scheduled for another round late yesterday to stitch up the gash which runs from her ankle to her knee. She is expected to make a good recovery.

Ms Ryan said doctors estimated the shark had probably been 2m to 2.5m long, judging by its teeth marks, and locals believe it may have been a bull shark – one of the more aggressive species which frequents Bundaberg waters.

Ms Ryan said she regularly swam at the beach, where she had lived for the past 10 years but would not be going back in again.

"I will not go in at Moore Park again," she said, adding that she now wanted to warn others about the dangers. "This has been really frightening . . . the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life. It would have killed a child or a person who was small and frail."